If It's Dark
by Collie Parkillo
Summary: He's been here from the start, death has been passed on to him for generations and he's simply returning to his maker. But he never dreamed that it would feel so disgusting, so powerless. Baker-centric, oneshot.


**disclaimer: the long walk is by no means mine.**

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Art Baker was no stranger to death.

Death was his constant companion, really. When he was younger, he used to run his hands along the obsidian black wood making up the coffins his uncle kept around. His seven other siblings stared at him, dumbfounded as to why he'd be so fixated by something so morbid and dark.

There'd been one day, he'd gone to school to be met with taunts and pushing in the hallways. And he'd come home, walked into his uncle's work area, and laid down in a coffin.

He'd made sure that no one was watching when he did it, but he had felt a strange peace come over him laying there for what he'd thought would be a few moments but what turned into over an hour.

That was why they were all here, really. They were all the boys who'd laid down in their coffins, even if it was only subconsciously.

Baker had never been suicidal, not like Barkovitch or McVries. He'd never felt the conscious need to leave this world the way Barkovitch seemed to have. But there was something. There was something dark and wispy and sad deep down in his chest. He'd smothered it awhile ago, for the sake of his numerous younger siblings and cheerful parents. Sadness, after all, for someone of his economic status, usually just seemed like greed.

It was that feeling, that small feeling poking in his gut that things would go on just fine without him. That he meant nothing in the scheme of things. His family could do without him. He was the greedy, messed-up one of their large family. Forgettable, really.

His breaths were getting slower, steadier. That was how his uncle had described people at funerals. Slow, steady breathers who were just trying to keep the breath inside their body long enough to keep from crying.

The dawn had tinged the sky pink, and Baker squinted up at it, licking his lips. He tasted blood, both dried and flesh. When had his lip split?

The remnants of a nosebleed had crusted his face and poured down onto his chest, soaking through the cheap polyester that made up his shirt. He'd never wanted a shower this badly before. To just cleanse all of the horrible stuff off of his face and body.

The ache in his feet slowly returned as the light came back to his world. It was a constant, horrible feeling, as though nails were being driven through the soles of his feet and were never coming out.

He reached up to wipe his nose on his sleeve with the shaky, careful motion of an old man. It felt like years since he'd last been truly, really alive. He knew death, he knew how dead people were, but the living? The living were much too complicated. He suddenly couldn't recall how they acted, how they moved, and scrambled for the memory in the mess that had become his mind.

He abandoned the search and let his head, which had looked around attentively for a moment, drop to his chest. A fresh spout of blood dripped from his nose, and he made a futile attempt to wipe it away and failed miserably.

The only thing he could think to do was moan softly and blink dumbly at his surroundings. A feeling of powerlessness swept over Baker as he looked at the remaining Walkers. Garraty was beside McVries, McVries with one arm around him probably just for support.

They were all breaking. They'd been stupid to try and survive. It was a cheating game, like the gambling his older brother had always been ostracized for doing. Baker thought he understood why his brother had tried that out. He'd wanted to find some way to feel power of the dull, lonely life they all lived.

Because powerlessness was the worst feeling. Powerlessness was feeling money slip from your hands. Powerlessness was kneeling down in front of the taller kids when he was five and saying whatever they told him to. Powerlessness was burning the grass of an innocent as a night rider.

That should have felt like power. It should have felt good, to hurt somebody for something that they couldn't help. But Baker felt nothing as he watched the flames, nothing but a small feeling of shame in his chest because he couldn't stop. Not now. Not so far into it.

When his brother had died, that had been the worst. His brother, the constant troublemaker, who had died of a heart attack. They'd been too poor to afford much help, and Baker had wept more than he ever had that night.  
Because there was nothing he'd been able to do. And that was the worst. The physical, tangible feeling of there not being anything you could do to help yourself.

And that was here. That was now. The blood was slick against his neck and made his clothes feel sticky and disgusting.  
Disgusting. That was what he was now. Nothing but a disgusting boy that the crowd would laugh and throw things at as he tottered to his death, his vacant eyes closing for the last time as the bang of a gunshot racked through his body.  
He'd tried, he'd tried so hard to be empathetic in this whole thing. To look past appearances and help out. Abraham's proposal of every man for himself had shocked him at first, but then it had hit him that this was no place for someone like him.

This was no place for sweet Art Baker with his big blue eyes and gentle smile, the boy who even when he was crying still laughed for his siblings and worked diligently in school, who said "sorry" whenever he so much as jostled somebody. And yet he couldn't stop being that way. Sweet Art Baker was a part of him that he couldn't erase no matter how hard he tried.

And that was powerlessness.

And that was why he hated himself. He had no spine, no backbone ability to man up and say that feelings don't matter, that this is a world of violence and horror, so there wasn't any reason for him not to be a part of that.

Because as horrible as the world was, Art Baker's idea of the world was lying in the grass outside of his house and reading, staring up at the way the clouds moved and listening to the buzz of the cicada. When Art Baker thought of the way the world was, he thought of his older brother pushing him on a rusty swing.

His days of being a night rider would have never occurred to him if no one brought it up. The terrible, dark things in life were muted by a light.

When you were dead, that light went out. That was how his uncle had described death. Lights out, goodnight forever.  
God, how he hoped it wasn't dark. Tears formed in Baker's eyes suddenly, and he willed himself not to cry. Garraty and McVries were nearby, they might hear him. Because once he started, he wouldn't be able to stop. All the sobs welling up in his chest would just burst out.

So Art Baker wiped a bit of blood from his nose, winced from the pain, and walked for a little longer.

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**i really need to stop writing oneshots and actually update something for once. **


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